Back To Berlin


Another in final series of concerts Jimi would perform; Back To Berlin was recorded on September 4/70, a mere two weeks before his death in London. During this short tour (conceived by Jimi's manager to help finance continuing construction of Jimi's Electric Lady Studio), Jimi was playing tracks that he was working on in the studio at the time. Getting audience reactions, and helping develop the new songs more in concert. And the older songs were tending to be played as originally released, with less jamming on stage. Red House for example is a very short seven and a half minutes compared to some of it's much longer jams. Sunshine Of Your Love clocks in under four minutes as well. Jimi was less concerned with playing the hits than he was developing his new material into something different. For some people, it probably wasn't what they wanted. But Jimi wanted to take his music beyond the 3 and a half minute pop format, and do more with it. Songs such as Hey Baby (Land Of The New Rising Sun) bear testament to this. A great track, though Jimi wouldn't complete a studio version before his death unfortunately. Machine Gun makes a nice appearance, and has an unusual (The Breeze And I) ending compared to most other live versions. On Purple Haze, Jimi sounds like his voice is straining, very rough sounding. Red House, as always, is great. Hey Joe makes a semi-rare concert ending appearance, featuring some haunting background vocals at one point by Billy(?). All in all, a quite strong concert.

Quality is good, though the cymbals tend to have a swishy sound to them. And vocals are a little low, but not too much. If this is an audience source, it's a very good one. Midnight Beat strikes again!

Catalog #: Midnight Beat MB CD 049